


Feathers and Flight

by PinkRangerV



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Idiots in Love, Romance, i don't even, wtf I just wrote a love story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-06
Updated: 2014-09-06
Packaged: 2018-02-16 09:51:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2265246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkRangerV/pseuds/PinkRangerV
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You don't need the feather to fly, Dumbo." Ruby tells Sam. Then Ruby dies. Not cool. How I wish S5 had gone. Ruby\Sam fluffy angsty making up and getting together ficlet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Feathers and Flight

Sam won't talk to her for a full week.

 

 _I'm sorry,_ Ruby whispers. She whispers it through salt lines and wards, as strong as Sam can make them now. _I'm sorry, I thought you understood. I didn't think it would hurt you like this!_

 

 _I_ understand _._ Sam hisses back. Mentally. Only in his mind. Because Ruby's dead and these...voices...well, he looked up addiction and that detox, it was--

 

Dean didn't mean to hurt him. Sam knew that. Dean was allergic to research, he didn't know, and Sam ignored the little voice in his head asking why Dean got a free pass on research when it was a human life at stake, because that wasn't fair to Dean at all. Dean was working so hard already. No one should ask him for more, he was doing more than he had to.

 

But it was just voices. Just an accident.

 

So Sam never responds aloud.

 

* * *

 

“Sam, damnit, _talk to me_!” comes at the end of that week.

 

Sam's cursing that _we killed you! What are you, immortal_ , said a lot less kindly, was more like a howl of despair.

 

Ruby paused, then glowered. “Well, if I'm _that_ unwanted, _excuse me_ ,” She snapped, but there were tears in her eyes.

 

“ _You lied to me_!”

 

“I gave you a choice!”

 

“You told me we were _stopping_ the apocalypse!”

 

“We _are_! Don't you realize how much _worse_ it would be if we let the angels control this? Sam, they don't care--”

 

“Oh, like _you_ do.”

 

Ruby fell silent. Then she stalked off to cry in peace.

 

* * *

 

At one point Ruby flat-out showed up.

 

Sam punched her in the face.

 

She punched him right back.

 

Dean wasn't able to make out much besides the occasional screamed word of exorcism (in Sam's case) or cursing (in Ruby's). Cas watched with a total lack of comprehension until, told to _do something_ , he tried to appeal to their better natures.

 

When Sam and Ruby started making out, Dean intervened by dragging them apart and trying to stab Ruby (again; she blocked this time) and swearing at Sam until Ruby told him to knock it off, why wasn't he happy that Sam hated her, and Dean tried to deck her.

 

Sam took the punch for her.

 

Ruby leaped on Dean and beat the unholy shit out of him.

 

Zachariah showed up.

 

Ruby attacked him before Sam was able to intervene and keep anyone from dying.

 

Ruby turned to Sam, planted a kiss on his lips, and declared that if anyone wanted to find them, they were going to have hot angry sex before teleporting away with Sam.

 

Sam re-appeared a few hours later, with hickeys on his neck, spectacularly bruised from the earlier fight, and refusing to say a word to Dean.

 

Dean went and got drunk.

 

* * *

 

Ruby...helped, weirdly enough. Kept them safe with spells politely outside of their wards. Made sure they both ate. When the boys split up, she walked up to Sam's motel room with a tub full of ice cream and let him know she wasn't going anywhere until...

 

Lucifer let her in.

 

Ruby didn't kneel. It was beneath her. But here, torn between the men she loved, she understood why it was so hard to leave. Why it mattered so much that Lucifer and Sam got along.

 

Sam was sleeping off the healing after putting a bullet through his brain, and Lucifer was looking at him, and Ruby didn't know if she was praying or not, but the same love she felt was in his eyes. Wasn't it?

 

“I need him.” Lucifer murmured. “Why does he keep fighting? He belongs to _me_.”

 

...It shattered her world, those sentences. Lucifer never loved Sam. Ruby had stayed loyal through hundreds of her own kind dead and through Sam hating her and through being tortured but now...

 

No. It was over.

 

“Get out.”

 

“What?”

 

“Get out. Don't come back.” Ruby went to Sam's bedside and took his hand, and remembered another person, only faintly but still, someone else she loved enough to sell her soul for. The devotion, the loyalty, the burning desire for another and not for oneself—this was love. “You don't love him. You don't love any of us. So get the hell out, or I swear I will take your head and mount it on the wall.”

 

Someone else had heard those words, too. She had felt the tearing as the person she should have loved turned and walked away before.

 

But this time she held onto Sam's hand, and this time she promised she'd do it right.

 

 

* * *

 

“Sam...I'm sorry.

 

I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought—no, please, just...just let me finish, okay? Lucifer, he _made us_ , and...

 

Doesn't it _hurt_? Your family _hates you_. I thought maybe...maybe he'd be your family. I thought...

 

I know I was lying to you, okay? And me, and everyone else, and I kept fucking lying, but then you were _dead_ and...damnit, Sam, I can't, I can't lose you! I...oh fuck.

 

I love you, Dumbo.”

 

“Ruby! Ruby, wait--”

 

* * *

 

Sam wants to kill her. He loves her. Dean is going to try to kill him.

 

He finds Ruby cornered by a couple of demons in thug-like meatsuits and it's just pure instinct, really, but there's a lot of power behind it. He exorcises them without a thought.

 

Without a _word_ , either.

 

Ruby smirks when she catches him staring at his hands, but he can hear her voice wobbling when she tells him, “Like I said, Dumbo.”

 

Dean flashes through Sam's mind. When Dean comes back then it'll...

 

Ruby is there and real and oh, Sam wants nothing more than to take her in his arms. He wants to be strong for her, the way she's strong for him sometimes. He wants to love and be loved.

 

The taste of blood and bile is a memory on his tongue.

 

“No blood.” Sam whispers. He's giving up and he knows it. “No more blood, Ruby. I can't...I can't do this if...”

 

“What are you talking about?” Ruby demands. She always demands, pushes, but when Sam says no she stops. She's intense, not bossy. “You never _needed_ blood, that was just magic shit. I mean, you gotta work a bit now to keep your strength up, but...”

 

“Promise?”

 

Ruby takes a long, hard look at him, then nods, and says, “Hey, let's go see Brazil.”

 

It's so random Sam bursts out laughing.

 

* * *

 

They go to Brazil. It's easy to get lost among throngs of people, in mountain forests that ground and center anyone who walks in, among foods and languages and lives that they've never seen before.

 

They don't trust _all_ the way. Not yet. But they learn, very slowly, how to do it.

 

They have, for a while, a bit of heaven.

 

Then, over the course of time, heaven and hell and wars come up, and they fight, and they sort it out, and they go back to America and start to work again.

 

Dean disowns Sam. He tried to attack Sam instead, beat Sam into line—he's too much like Michael for anyone's comfort sometimes—but Ruby steps in.

 

Demons try to attack Ruby sometimes. Sam has his own knife now, forged from spellwork and an angel blade. He kills them quickly if he's feeling merciful.

 

They are something good together, and they don't know much beyond that—but they really don't need to. Together works well enough for them both.

 

When Sam stops the apocalypse, Ruby goes back for his soul.

 

And she gets it out.


End file.
